


In Holy Matrimony

by ProblematicPitch



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Bookverse Characters, Common-Law Marriage, Established Relationship, First Dates, First Time, M/M, Oneshot, Own Character Designs, POC!Aziraphale, POC!Crowley, Post-Canon, Trans!Aziraphale, Trans!Crowley, headcanons, unabashed tenderness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-05-31 03:39:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19417717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProblematicPitch/pseuds/ProblematicPitch
Summary: The air is very hot, and very close, and smells of chlorophyll and rich earth. Whatever hellfire is left in his blood itches at being so close to something so holy. But it isn’t a bad feeling, necessarily.Aziraphale sits on the stone bench, gazing up at the night. The moon is a bare crescent, and there are lots of clouds, but a miraculous patch has opened up just above the skylight so they can see the stars. Sitting there, bathed in clear light, Crowley is almost afraid to approach him. The angel’s brown eyes glitter as if they’re creating the luminescence, not just reflecting it.—Crowley is asked to take Aziraphale on a proper date after the resolution at Armageddn't. But he finds that the reality of loving this angel is a far cry from the fantasy of it. In fact, it's something much better.





	In Holy Matrimony

—

“Let’s go on a date. A proper one.” 

“Oh?” 

Aziraphale smiles and pats his forearm. “Pick me up at 7 pm, on the dot.” 

“Where shall we go?” 

He winks. “I’ll leave that up to you.” 

—

Crowley dutifully pulls up the Bentley outside the bookshop at 7 pm sharp. There’s a small flurry of activity behind the windows; a figure turns the Open sign to Closed and exits the shop into the descending twilight. 

Aziraphale enters the vehicle. “Hello. Good to see you! You look lovely, dear.” 

The demon has gone speechless. Aziraphale’s hair is carefully coiffed. His perfect tailored suit appears to be made of pure, fluid silver and he’s got a hint of silver eyeshadow to match. He’s polished and dressed-to-the minute in the latest fashion in a way Aziraphale never is. The effect overwhelms Crowley and he flexes his jaw weakly, opening and closing his mouth a few times in an attempt to speak. “Hi,” he manages at last, his voice cracking on the sole syllable. 

“Mm. This is new, isn’t it? I like it.” He teases Crowley, running his thumb across the fresh stubble on his jaw. His equally freshly-minted and formerly debonair boyfriend is short-circuiting. 

Aziraphale kisses him like they’ve had a lifetime to practice. Not that they haven’t spent a hundred lifetimes practicing other things with each other, like how to walk perfectly in step, how to know everything about the other, how to say what’s almost (but not quite) exactly on their minds in order to be honest-enough without upsetting the delicate balance of things. 

Crowley is overcome. He leans his head against the steering wheel. “Can’t... concentrate...” 

Aziraphale laughs at his vanquished foe. “Let’s get going, dear.” The Bentley begins to move of its own volition. 

He is still reeling. But he notices the angel’s blue bow tie is still slightly crooked, and it brings him back to reality. And oh, his car is speeding down the road. Without him steering it. “How are you doing that?” he yelps. You don’t know how to drive!” 

“It’s not as hard as you make it seem, Crowley.” The car merges perfectly into traffic. Neither of them breaks eye contact to ensure it has. “Just follow the rules of the road, and everything goes so smoothly.” 

“You trust humans and their rule-keeping far too much for my taste,” the demon grouses. “Ah! Watch out for oncoming traffic!” 

—

They narrowly make it to Clos Maggiore and enter the conservatory. There’s no need to inform the maïtre’d—somehow, the waiters will realize that two sharply dressed gentlemen are seated at an unlikely open table and will wait on them appropriately. 

“Oh Crowley, it’s lovely,” Aziraphale gasps, reaching for his hand. “I can’t believe I’ve never been!” 

A canopy of cherry-blossom branches make up the ceiling overhead. Soft fairy lights glimmer like pink pearls within them, lighting up the fading dusk as if they are the first stars of the night. 

Everything is colored in an orange glow as the candles sputter and dance. Other couples are leaning towards each other in intimate conversation. 

These two are having a conversation mostly without words. Words are a fantastic creation, one of Aziraphale’s favorites (especially the written kind), but sometimes they did more to drive people apart than bring them together. 

Crowley is clad in dusky purple, his thick, dark hair gathered just off the nape of his neck in a long braid. His gaze is a butterfly that isn’t sure if it wants to land on the angel and drink him up, or flutter about the room in perpetual indecision. If Aziraphale felt like saying anything just now, it might be: I cannot wait to get you away from here, somewhere prying eyes won’t follow. 

—

They’re in the greenhouse wing of Crowley’s apartment. It’s humid and hot. 

Aziraphale greets all his plants like they’re old friends. “Oh, hello, loves! You’re looking wonderfully green this evening.” They trail longingly after him, shifting their leaves as if trying to soak up more of his presence. He is the sun that’s set only hours ago. Most of them have closed up their buds for the night but they are coaxed to bloom, preening for the angel’s attention. He brushes his fingertips against their tendrils and they wrap around him. 

“They like you.” Crowley’s voice is soft bordering on fragile. 

“You’ve taken wonderfully good care of them.” 

He rubs the back of his head, tapping a toe against the sleek tile. “Ah, I don’t know. I think I could have managed to be—kinder?” 

“Kindness is important, but so is watering them. I can never seem to keep any plants alive!” He laughs in gentle self-deprecation, and Crowley swears he can hear chimes. 

The air is very hot, and very close, and smells of chlorophyll and rich earth. Whatever hellfire is left in his blood itches at being so close to something so holy. But it isn’t a bad feeling, necessarily. 

Aziraphale sits on the stone bench, gazing up at the night. The moon is a bare crescent, and there are lots of clouds, but a miraculous patch has opened up just above the skylight so they can see the stars. Sitting there, bathed in clear light, Crowley is almost afraid to approach him. The angel’s brown eyes glitter as if they’re creating the luminescence, not just reflecting it. 

He looks back at his lover with an eyebrow quirk that asks “what are you waiting for?” and pats the empty seat beside him. One hesitant step at a time, Crowley approaches. 

A deep sigh seems to have been animating his body, and having left it, left him a mere shell. White knuckles grip the stone and then fidget in his lap, having returned to their accustomed brown. 

“I have to ask,” Aziraphale ventures. “You seem awfully nervous. Is it something I’ve done? If I’m moving too fast—” 

Crowley releases an anxious giggle, reminded of their having been on opposite sides of that particular argument. “I guess I’ve been... thinking about this so long. Imagining what it might be like? But it’s different, now that it’s real.” 

“Mm.” The angel’s finger traces a shape on Crowley’s knee. How was it that his hands were always so perfect? “It doesn’t have to be different, you know. ‘Same old mortal enemies, warring from time immemorial ad infinitum.’ Only we really just go out and have lunch and then cause problems for everybody.” 

“I think I want it to be different.” He’s trying to push the depth of his feeling into Aziraphale’s heart, to communicate what is so hard to explain with crude sound. But he’s sort of just straining his eyes in the dim light. 

Maybe today would be the day they finally cracked the telepathy barrier and would no longer have to make do with clumsy imperfect language. Soul to soul. Like something out of a sci-fi blockbuster. Oh, how he loved wasting a few perfectly good hours of a fine summer day sitting in the dark waiting for giant blue monsters to smash up the— 

He gives up the train of thought, smushes Aziraphale’s cheeks between his palms, and kisses him proper. 

The touch of him is divine, both literally and in the blissful-nuptial sense. Also, if he tried to find better words to describe it his tongue might actually tie itself into knots and then he would be struck blind. Or something. He’d been dozing through most of the presentation in which they’d described (with helpful diagrams) why exactly fraternizing with angels was not permitted, and exactly what might happen if one did. 

It was all a load of bollocks, though. Kissing Aziraphale was pretty blessed good, and so were the hands on his— 

Crowley breaks off. “I’m. Erm. A little out of practice.” 

“Just like riding a velocipede,” the angel smirks. 

He gasps in mock astonishment. “You’re insufferable!” 

“I’ll walk you through it,” he promises, in between doing something entirely un-angelic to Crowley’s neck and chest. Given the circumstances, and the warmth that was coursing through this body, Crowley was inclined to agree. 

—

The demon regrets his choice of decor as soon as they alight on the very stern and modern mattress. The salesperson had mumbled something about ‘latest fashions’ and Crowley had handed his card over without question. Comfort wasn’t one of his principal concerns, and the whole thing was more for show, anyway. But Aziraphale had a knack for making beds (and sofas, and armchairs, and automobiles both luxury and thrift) more comfortable just by being in them, which was a definite plus. 

They had sex in Hell, of course. It was a Human thing by definition, but the demons had license to experiment. It was more inventive and far less inhibited than what angels were allowed—which, if he struggled to remember, was some sort of restrained... mingling? But it also had a tendency to be cold and brutal and bite pieces off your soul (mostly figuratively) and was always, always more lonely than just Doing It alone would be. After a certain point he no longer bothered. There was little reason when you couldn’t belch gouts of fire or grow ten-inch claws without getting distracted fantasizing about something—someone else. 

But this, this was different. This was heavenly communion. They tangled and bumped and giggled and generally floundered their way into some form of bliss. 

Crowley sort of wants to be laid waste to. But Aziraphale insists on taking every square inch of skin as a fertile field for love to be grown in. The angel peppers him with fragile kisses, each touch a rose, blooming. Aziraphale always looks lived-in, and his body does, also: soft, lined, scarred, with freckles and moles you could trace lines between like constellations. It was a temple to a god with the most devoted followers, who tread the carpet threadbare but left their glorious gifts in return. 

He wants to lay at Aziraphale’s feet, kiss his knees, beg for he knows not what. Crowley wants to kneel at the altar of him. He settles for making his love known in the old, traditional way. When Aziraphale sighs and murmurs, “Oh, that _is_ good,” something hard and lonely deep in the center of Crowley breaks open. 

“Not good. Never good.” He recoils, drawing in on himself. 

“You _are_ good, Crowley. Strong. Sweet. Clever.” Crowley screams, like one of his own precious plants he’s put a torch to for being flawed. Aziraphale kisses his forehead, materially aided by the legions of tenderness marching forth from his heart. Crowley cries in earnest now, acid tears that burn his face, and Aziraphale helps him wipe them away as fast as they flow. “It wasn’t easy to try and save the world, was it? Knowing you were doomed to fail. But you did it anyway. You loved this place and its people enough to fight for it. And now, look! It is saved. We have more time.” 

He sniffles, voice issuing forth in ragged sobs. “I failed at being an angel. Lousy at being a demon. And now I’m nothing, and I don’t know what to do.” 

“My mind, you were quite good at being both,” he teases. “But those were just jobs, Crowley. Who you _are_ is more important that any pointless affiliation. Just like your name, my dear. You get to decide it for yourself.” His wandering hands graze Crowley’s ribs. “Or at least, that’s what you’ve always shown me.” 

Crowley kisses him some more, craving the relief of absolution, fueled as much by love as the need to wash the taste of shame out of his mouth. Aziraphale kisses _good._ Of course, everything he does is so, so good. And Crowley holds that tender close, hoping that maybe the vulnerable potent will rub off on him one day. 

“What do you _need,”_ Crowley asks in desperation. The angel gave and gave like a fount of eternal sufficiency. This was what Heaven was supposed to do, that whole-cup-runneth over thing (until you did something to displease them, and that particular goblet would get very dry, very fast). It scares Crowley. Aziraphale has always been so transparent, so hungry. This love feels everlasting, but Crowley knows nothing is so. Not even eternity. He needs Aziraphale to want, again. He needs to be needed. 

“Haven’t I made it obvious?” He tucks a curl of hair behind the demon’s ear. His voice husky and soft. “I want _you,_ Crowley. I need you.” 

Crowley rolls backwards out of the bed. Aziraphale is sprawled, naked, watching Crowley as he paces the room. His form so dark and beautiful against the silver sheets. Crowley feels his essence being crushed into gravel under a mountain. 

“Seduce me,” he asks. “Please.” 

Aziraphale sits up, extends his palm out in the night. An anchor, an olive branch. “Come to me, my demon. Come to me, my fallen one, my angel. Be wed to me, in this bed, in this skin.” 

His mouth moves of its own accord. “I would unite my soul with yours.” 

“Come to me. Be married in flesh and in soul, by God’s will.” 

He tears up. “Would she? I mean, will She?” 

Aziraphale nods. He knows. 

Crowley submits. Their fingers entwine. They make the sacrament, and as they consecrate this conjugal bed, he’s never felt less alone. 

—

It is dawn. Aziraphale glows, shinier than the satin pillowcase on which he rests his perfect curls. If he still could, Crowley would unhinge his jaw and try to swallow him whole. He settles for rubbing the angel’s chest, trying to wake him up. 

He yawns and opens a single eye. “Good morning, my husband.” 

“Breakfast?” Crowley suggests. 

“Mm.” He leans forward, languidly pinning Crowley against the mattress. “I’ve got all the sustenance I need, right here.” 

“You are incorrigible,” he sighs, saturated with fondness. 

“Says the unholy one?” 

“‘In Christ’s love, we are all redeemed,’” he quotes, making sweeping gestures in his limited range of motion. 

“Hm. I don’t think ‘Christ’ ever loved you quite like this.” 

“You don’t know!” His protests are slightly muffled by Aziraphale’s doting. 

“I don’t. But I _am_ yours in holy matrimony.”

Crowley could be very wiggly when he wanted to be, which he is using to his full advantage as Aziraphale devises new and clever ways of tormenting him. “Today and all the days that follow. Of which there will hopefully be several, since we went to all the trouble of making the End Times not end so soon.” 

This is too much for Aziraphale. He flops down on his back, overcome. “Yes, let’s get some breakfast. And let’s pray to whomever’s still listening that the humans stick around for quite a while and keep inventing interesting new things for us to do. Or this is going to be a very long Eternity.” 

He grins sharpish. “Hey, there’s always Alpha Centauri...” he suggests, with the air of a schoolchild trying to convince their parent to imbibe an eyeful of glued-macaroni art. 

Aziraphale sniffs. “I much prefer the Earth to any of your _star clusters..._ ” 

“Star clusters?!” he gasps. “Why, you ungrateful—” 

They kiss for a long time after that. They are both quasi-immortal beings who have waited a very long time for this moment. Cut them some slack. 

—

If Anathema could have seen their auras after this night, she’d have noticed that they had both turned a rather vivid lavender. 

She would have hoped that this was symbolic of something. 

**Author's Note:**

> more headcanons? follow my Tumblr [@thwartingly](https://thwartingly.tumblr.com/)
> 
> problems/errors? DM me
> 
> i cannot sleep and it's nearing 4:30 AM so _you_ get a fic _you_ get a fic _everybody_ gets a fic


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